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Readers taken into world’s deepest caves in ‘Underground Bases’

In Underground Bases, book seven in our Underground Knowledge series, we advise readers that most underground bases most are built inside or directly above natural, pre-existing cave networks; and in our blog of October 26 we listed examples of some of these networks. Now we turn our attention to the extensive underground cave system known as Craighead Caverns, in Sweetwater, Tennessee.

The mysterious Lost Sea inside Craighead Caverns…

In the following excerpt from Underground Bases, we take our readers inside Craighead Caverns and we visit New Mexico’s Lechuguilla Cave, which is another example of the scale of underground cave systems:

According to Wikipedia, Craighead Caverns are “best known for containing the United States’ largest and the world’s second largest non-subglacial underground lake, The Lost Sea. In addition to the lake, the caverns contain an abundance of crystal clusters called anthodites, stalactites and stalagmites, plus a waterfall.”

Seen Magazine, of America’s Southeast Education Network, claims Craighead Caverns was named after an Indian chief who at one time owned the property and the cave, and who may well have discovered the tiny opening that was its natural entrance.

In an article dated November 19, 2010, Seen Magazine reports, “During the Civil War (1863) parts of the cave were mined for salt-peter — which was used as a principal ingredient in the manufacturing of gunpowder.

“In 1905 Mr. Ben F. Sands, then just a boy…pushed beyond the fluctuating pool of the Spring Room through the tiny mud crawlway — and into the Lake Room — discovering the Lost Sea. Rumors of a large lake in Craighead Caverns had existed before Ben Sands discovery, but these may have referred to the elusive back-waters in the Spring Room, and not the actual chamber of the Lost Sea.

“In 1927 Craighead Caverns was formed. A larger more accessible entrance was opened below the natural one to make entering the cave less strenuous. The Tennessee Power Co. installed the first lighting system — which was among the first cave systems in the country.”

The Lechuguilla Cave, in New Mexico, is another example of the scale of underground cave systems. Only officially discovered in 1986, Lechuguilla is the deepest cave in the US and the seventh-longest explored cave in the world.

New Mexico’s Lechuguilla Cave…a more recent discovery.

According to ExtremeScience.com, this cave is a winding, twisting underground maze which has yet to be completely explored and mapped. Currently, 101 miles of Lechuguilla have been explored and mapped, with no end in sight. So far, the deepest part of the cave measured goes down 1,632 feet.

This almost pales to insignificance when compared to the deepest cave in the world – identified by ExtremeScience.com as Voronja, or “Crow’s Cave”, in the western Caucasus Mountains of the Georgian Republic, which “has officially been verified to be 7,021 feet deep.” According to Wikipedia, it remains the only known cave on Earth deeper than 2,000 meters or one and a quarter miles.